RTRFM Distant Murmurs Interview Quickies – Mining Tax

We’ve been listening to it since we were kids, and in a lot of ways, it was a key into being ourselves, into learning about music, into meeting like-minded people, into feeling like a part of the world. So that means a lot.

What impact do you think it’s had on the Perth Music community in recent years?

RTR is the community, or a community, or the tie that binds more of us together than we could imagine. Radio means the substitution of the autonomous for the anonymous collective, an entity whereby the animating spirit behind a permeable and shifting idea-structure enables people to identify with one another and with a broader set of ideals, even without buying into the whole of the detail. It’s not for everyone, RTR, but it’s for everyone.

How do you think radio has managed to maintain relevance despite it coming across as a somewhat archaic medium?

I don’t have a TV or Netflix, and either RTR, RN or one of RTR’s like in the East is always on.

Archaic to whom? If the voice wasn’t enough, we would have given up on singing songs by now, and we haven’t. Radio is where people are alone, together, completely, and it won’t die until people are over having communities, and I don’t think that’s fading away.
No medium ever dies, and I think what the true essence of radio that will keep people returning is that idea of trust, that void the digital overwhelm, with the nebulous exhaustion of wading through endless choices of diminishing consequence, can’t ever fully plug.

A medium of transmittance inherently comes back to the strength of the transmitting institution in supplying the psychological needs of users, and because I trust that I’m going to learn something from RTR when I tune in, I tune in. What stations like RTR need though is renewal and energy and engagement to keep cementing and building that trust, and events like DM hopefully provide people with a sense of that.

Do you have a favourite show on RTR? Favourite presenter?

The POSTED crew, Adam and Harry and Sinco, Tanya Bunter, and of course the one and only Chris Wright. Giant Steps: crucial.

Which bands are you hanging out for at this Saturday’s Distant Murmurs?

Kitchen People, Phil Stroud, Bahasa Malay.

What can we expect from your set? Any final words?

Just synth-rage-rave carnage. We’re gonna run some laps to get our stamina up. But that’s a non-core promise.

Mining Tax play Distant Murmurs at the Rosemount Hotel on Saturday January 16. Tickets from shop.rtrfm.com.au.